


Post-War Economy

by cassievalentine



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: AU fix it, Alternate Universe, Everyone lives, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-06
Updated: 2016-01-06
Packaged: 2018-05-12 06:25:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5655898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassievalentine/pseuds/cassievalentine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Economy: The careful management of available resources*.</p><p>*Resources can be physical, monetary or emotional.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Post-War Economy

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a Steggy Secret Santa gift for copperbadge on Tumblr and I really, REALLY hope they enjoy it :)

Not long after Steve is gone, she finds out. She's pregnant. She takes the news calmly, listens to all the advice and instructions the doctor offer her and then calmly returns to her apartment. After closing the door behind her, she stands in the middle of the room for a long moment, staring at nothing as her brain chews through this new development in her life.

She doesn't notice when her purse slips from her hand, but she does jump at the bang it makes when it hits the floor. Almost absently, she looks down and sees the barrel of the small hand gun she carries sticking out from the top of the bag and the magnitude of her situation finally hits her.

She's in possession of the last remaining sample of Steve Rogers' DNA and Erskine's formula and there are numerous parties in the world, both legitimate and not, that would do anything to get their hands on her and the baby.

With this thought in mind, Peggy begins to formulate a plan and three days later she's left a cryptic letter with Howard and is on the train heading out west.

***

"What the hell was she thinking?" Stark demands as he waves the letter around. "What kind of trouble could she have possibly gotten herself into? She hasn't even been in the country for a month!" Howard continues to pace around his office, ranting and raving about Peggy and the letter and questioning out loud why she didn't come to him for help. Edwin Jarvis listens to his employer as he tidies up the study, but doesn't offer any words. From what he's heard about the illustrious Peggy Carter, if the woman up and left with only a note, she had her reasons.

When Howard downs two glasses of scotch in quick succession and pours a third, Jarvis slips from the room and begins sending home all the staff that he can. None of them need to see the state that Mr. Stark is going to drink himself into over the situation with Ms. Carter.

***

After far more time on a train than is humane, Carter reaches her destination. It's a tiny speck of a village in Colorado call Peonia that is just starting to boom with famers and miners coming to seek their fortunes. She takes a room at the only boarding house in town, talks her way into a job at the local bank and goes about constructing a story about being a war bride sent stateside by her GI husband only to get word that he had been killed shortly after she left England. Peggy is always careful to fidget with her left ring finger a little, like there had been a ring there once that was now gone. She didn't care what people assumed she had done with the ring so long as they believed there had been a ring at some point.

She thinks about contacting Howard, about letting him know where she's settled and why, but Peggy stops herself. Stark's movements are followed relentlessly by the press and she can only imagine what would happen if a newspaper caught wind that he was traveling to some speck of a village in rural Colorado, especially with a single, pregnant woman involved in the story.

***

Carter settles into the rhythm of the village and begins to carve out a life for herself and the tiny person on the way. She makes friends with a few of the tellers and women who have come to her for advice on balancing a family budget. They all get together for coffee a couple of times a week, and spend a Saturday in the next town over every couple of weeks satisfying herself with the news reels that Howard Stark isn't getting himself into too much trouble.

She smiles as she listens to the girls guess about what life in New York is like, about the lights and the glitz and the glamour. They discuss musicals they'd like to see, the fashions they'd like to buy and then they gossip softly about the debauchery and immorality they've heard stories about. Peggy wants to correct them, to tell them about what life in New York is really like, but she keeps her mouth shut. As far as the residents of Peonia are concerned, she arrived in New York from England, spent the night in a hotel near Grand Central Station and then boarded a train to Peonia with the thought that her husband would be joining her soon.

One Saturday as she's waiting for the rest of the group to meet her at the diner, a small shop catches her eye. She steps in for a look around and discovers an impossibly small pale yellow sweater with matching bonnet, booties and blanket. She fingers the edges of the sweater and feels the smoothness of the ribbon woven along the edge of the blanket and can't resist buying the set.

She's just begun to show enough to remove any doubt about being pregnant, but it's the tiny outfit that finally makes things seem concrete and real.

***

She dreams about Steve for the first time that night.

She dreams about a cozy apartment with warm sunlight spilling through the windows. The living room is in a controlled state of chaos and the glance she catches of the kitchen is no better, but she doesn't care because at the far end of the room is a familiar figure. As she moves closer, she realizes he's swaying gently and humming a tune under his breath to the tiny bundle of blankets in his arms. He turns and offers her a brilliant smile once she's at his side.

"She is so beautiful Peggy," he tells her before dropping his gaze back to the bundle. With a water smile, she reaches out toward the blankets, intending to pull them back so she can see the baby as well, but as soon as her fingers brush against the pale yellow wool and silky ribbon, she wakes up.

Peggy bolts up in bed, kicking at the covers that have wrapped themselves around her legs. Once free, she sits on the edge of the bed, waiting for her heart to slow and her breathing to level out. The idea of a cup of tea drifts through her mind just as she feels an unfamiliar flutter in her belly. Peggy pauses, holds her breath and waits. The flutter comes again and she quickly presses her hand to her belly and feels another flutter in response to the pressure of her hand.

She sucks in a breath as the veneer of denial around the pregnancy is shattered and despite her best efforts, the tears finally start to fall. For the first time in the almost six months since Steve's death, Peggy lets herself breakdown. She cries out all the grief, the fear and the frustration before falling back into a restless sleep.

If Ruth notices anything amiss the next morning, she doesn't comment. Peggy does find a few wild flowers from the garden in a glass of water next to her bed when she returns home that evening, as well as a new tin of the tea she's comes to favor.

***

The last few weeks of her pregnancy seem to crawl by, especially once the bank's manager, Mr. Wilson, insists that she stop working until the baby is six weeks old.

"We can discuss the details later," he tells her. Carter insists that she can keep working, that the bulk of her day is spent sitting and she's under very little strain, but he won't hear of it. She stops arguing with him when he assures her he intends to keep paying her over her leave. It won't be her full salary, but it'll be better than nothing.

Ruth leaves her to her own devices for the rest of the day, but she pushes a basket of laundry that needs folding into her arms the next morning after breakfast.

"The waiting is the worst part," she told Carter with a knowing look as she returned to the ironing. "Best to keep busy doing whatever you can." Peggy looks at the basket in her lap for a moment before shifting it to the floor and pulling the first tea towel out. She knows Ruth is watching her, but she doesn't comment on it. As she reaches for the third tea towel, her companion has started talking again and by the time she finishes folding the basket, a second has appeared at her feet and she continues on folding.

While Peggy is not normally one for domestic tasks, she finds that there is something soothing about folding laundry this time.

***

The baby arrives a few weeks later in the middle of night and as soon as she is placed in her mother's arms, Peggy is instantly in love. She runs her hand over the baby's dark hair and down the bridge of her nose, she counts fingers and toes and admires the perfect little nails at the end of each digit. Peggy can't help but smile as the baby grabs ahold of her finger and holds on with all her might as she blinks at the bright light and tries in vain to focus on her mother's face. The baby needs a bath and she could use one as well, but she can't bring herself to give the baby up yet.

Eventually, the bed dips near her hip and she looks up to see Ruth sitting beside her, admiring the baby as well.

"Your man have anything to do with her at all?" she asks with a smile.

"Her eyes," Peggy says after a while, blinking back tears. "She has Steve's eyes." Ruth nods and pats Peggy's leg before getting up and dropping another blanket around her shoulders. "The shakes will stop soon enough," she tells her before moving a basin of warm water closer to the bed. She wets and wrings out a soft cloth before sitting on the edge of the bed again and grasps one of the baby's feet. She begins to fuss as Ruth works on cleaning her up while talking about everything and nothing.

***

It quickly becomes clear that Ellie has inherited more than just her eyes from Steve. She's a small baby who struggles to gain weight and sleeps too little. She won't stick to the schedule given to Peggy by the doctor, refuses to settle for anyone but Peggy or Ruth and insists on being walked to sleep every night. But Peggy wouldn't trade her for the world.

They make it through the year though, and when Peggy helps the baby blow out the single candle on her small birthday cake, she can't help but wish Steve was there.

She may also make a wish that year two is easier.

(It isn't, but Peggy just loves Ellie that much harder.)

***

When Ellie is three she starts asking about her father. The little girl wants to know everything about him and grows frustrated when Peggy will only give her bread crumbs. Peggy tells her snippets of stories about Steve, about how kind he was, how caring. As they sit at the kitchen table drawing pictures one evening she tells Ellie about how Steve was a wonderful artist. She told her daughter about the sketches of friends and family that looked like photographs, about the maps he'd draw for his own benefit, about the cartoons he'd draw that would get passed around among the troops.

Ellie listens with wide eyes as her mother talks about some of what both she and Steve did during the war, about spy missions and battles and that time she, Steve and the commandos got lost in Southern France and ended up having a lovely summer day by a lake.

What Ellie doesn't realize is how heavily Peggy edits the stories so that the little girl can't accidentally let it slip that her father was Captain America.

***

Not long after Ellie's fourth birthday, Peggy's world is thrown off its axis. She's sitting in her office at the bank, re-reading the file of the couple she's supposed to speak too about organizing their finances to prevent them from losing their farm when May, one of the tells bursts in without knocking.

"He found him!" she exclaims. "I can't believe it! I can't believe that he actually found him! I can't believe that he was still searching after all this time." May rambles on as Peggy tries to get her to explain but she eventually gives up. Peggy pushes away from her desk and moves around the over excited teenager to get the actual story from Kathryn.

"Howard Stark pulled Captain America out of the ice in Greenland," Kathryn told her, handing over the newspaper had had been reading. Carter's lips thinned as she clenched her jaw while skimming the article. She really just wanted to know where, exactly, he'd been found and when the memorial service was. She didn't care about anything else that might be in the article. She'd been at his side since he was 100 pounds soaking wet and had fought along side him in France, Italy and Germany. She knew the stories, the good and the bad, she didn't need to read about them again.

"He's alive," she said quietly, lowering the paper after she had finished with the article. "He's alive and in New York." She looked down at the picture of Steve in his Captain America uniform again until the paper was abruptly pulled from her lap and passed to someone else. She's still sitting in a chair by Kathryn's station when the receptionist taps her on the shoulder to tell her that the Sorensens have arrived. Peggy forces herself back into the here and now, stands up, straightens her skirt and heads back to her office.

***

That night, after Ellie is in bed and Ruth is off at a church meeting, Peggy settles herself next to the phone in the kitchen and stares at it for a long moment before finally picking up the receiver and dialing the operator. She nervously plays with the phone cord while she waits for the call to be connected.

"Stark residence." Her breath catches at the sound of Jarvis' voice and the fact that she's been away for five years suddenly hits her like a ton of bricks. "Hello?"

"Yes, sorry," she says. "Is Mr. Stark available?"

"Mr. Stark has asked not to be disturbed this evening. Might I take a message?"

"Please tell Mr. Stark that Peggy is on the line, I'm sure he'll want to take the call," she tells Jarvis. She rolls her eyes a little as she hears a long suffering sigh, but he eventually agrees to pass the message along and asks her to hold the line. She hums along with the sonata she can hear playing somewhere int he background until the music is drowned out by Howard yelling at Jarvis. She can't hear the details, but she hears him use her name as well as Jarvis' while Jarvis tries to offer apologies.

"Peggy?" Howard finally asks once he's on the line. "Where the hell are you?" Peggy opens her mouth to tell him, but she finds herself hesitating.

"Colorado," she finally settles on. The state is big enough, with a small enough population and nothing outside of Denver that would hold Howard's interest.

"What the hell are you doing in Colorado?" he finally asks after a moment of stunned silence. "It doesn't matter," he replies before she can answer. "Can you be in Denver by tomorrow? I can have you back in New York by dinner." Before she can stop herself, she's telling him she'll need two seats and he immediately starts making quips. "It's Steve, Peg. You don't need your whole trousseau to impress him."

"Two seats, Howard. Or I'm staying where I am," she tells him, using the same voice she does when she needs Ellie to do as she’ has been told without question. He finally agrees, offers a few jabs about her need for two seats without an explanation and then grows quiet.

"Peg? I've missed you," he finally tells her and she returns the sentiment without hesitation. Howard offers some more concrete directions to the airfield he's planning to use and they quickly say their good byes. After she hangs up, she feels restless and giddy, like Ellie gets before a friend's birthday party or a rare trip to the movies in the next town over. Unable to sit still, she finds herself climbing the steps to her room while making a mental list of what she needs to pack for herself and her daughter. By the time she falls into bed, the clock down the hall is chiming midnight and all she has left to do is to gather the last of Ellie's things and she's ready to go.

***

She lets Ellie have the window seat without arguing and spends the trip up to Denver pointing out all kinds of things through the window. By the time they get to the airfield in Denver, Ellie is in need of somewhere to run around and Peggy could do with a shot of bourbon. Finding neither, she lets her daughter run around a small patch of grass at the airfield while she nurses a cup of coffee while waiting for the pilot to ready the plane.

Ten minutes into the several hour long flight, they learn that Ellie gets air sick.

***

By the time they land in New York, Peggy and Ellie are absolutely shattered and the thought of having to deal with Howard and the inevitable questions is almost too much for Peggy to even contemplate. All she really wants to do is coax a sandwich into her daughter before cleaning them up and putting them both to bed for the night.

Instead, she gathers an exhausted Ellie into her arms, straightens the collar of her dress and steels herself to meet Howard and all his questions. She waits just outside the plane for Howard to cross the tarmac. When he does finally arrive, he looks at Ellie for a very long time before turning his attention to her.

"You look good," he tells her. "Husband?" he immediately asks.

"No," is her reply.

"Good. Let's go. There are already snacks at home and Jarvis will be happy to start a bath or two, right?"

"Of course, sir," Jarvis replied, opening the car door before helping Peggy and Ellie into the car. They drive for a while, the smooth ride helping Ellie fall into a deep sleep and threatening to send Peggy to sleep as well before Stark starts talking again. She lends half an ear to the conversation, but soon realizes that he's not really saying anything of consequence. The more he talks though, the more she feels her patience wearing thin.

"Howard," she finally snaps, her voice a loud whisper. "Shut up," is all she tells him. He stops mid-sentence and looks at her, his mouth finally snapping shut when he sees the look on her face.

"We can talk tomorrow," he says quickly before falling silent again. Peggy helps Ellie shift herself around a little before resting her cheek on her daughter's head. By the time they hit the next intersection, she's asleep as well.

***

"Why . . ." Peggy smiled indulgently as Ellie's train of thought was derailed by yet another skyscraper. "Why are we here again?" she asks as they wait at the corner for a light to change. Peggy had debated long and hard about what to tell Ellie about why they were in New York, but had eventually just settled on telling her that they were seeing some sights and visiting some old friends.

"Like Mr. Stark?" she asks as they finally cross the street while staring at all the cars that were waiting for the light to change again.

"Like Mr. Stark," Peggy replied, giving Ellie's hand a squeeze. She had yet to tell Ellie about Steve being int he city, wanting to tell him about the girl first. "I spoke to Mr. Jarvis this morning and he told me that he and Mrs. Jarvis were wondering if you'd like to go to the zoo with them later this afternoon." For the rest of walk to Howard's office, Peggy listened as Ellie chattered on about all the animals she hoped to see.

***

With Ellie off exploring the Central Park Zoo with the Jarvis family, Peggy found herself standing outside a nondescript door, fiddling with the edges of the snap shot she had with her. She knew Steve was behind the door, that he was waiting for her to knock, but she was having trouble making herself actually do the knocking. After what felt like hours, she finally raised her hand and wrapped on the door twice before it swung open and she found herself face to face with Steve Rogers once again.

"Hi," was all she got out before he reached out and pulled her to him and they hung on to each other like they would drown if they let go. She eventually felt his grip on her loosen slightly and she pulled back as much as she could to look at him again, but he had other ideas. Without the hesitation he'd displayed the first time they were together, Steve leaned down and kissed her long and deep before his hands began to roam up and down her back. Her brain quickly caught up to the situation and she began to give back as good as she was getting.

Before long, he was backing them towards the bed and she was fumbling with the buttons on his shirt.

***

"Hi," he finally said, his chest still heaving from their previous activities.

"Hi," she said back, pulling him down for another kiss.

"Sorry I missed the dance," he told. "My plane was late." Peggy tried to not to laugh at the horrible joke, but failed miserably. Instead, she tucked herself into his side once he had settled beside her on the bed. She threw a leg over his for good measure while he dropped another kiss onto the top of her head. "The photograph," he said quickly, remembering that she had been fiddling with it before he'd taken her to bed. Her eyes grew wide and she sat up suddenly, holding the sheet to her chest as the whole reasons she'd come to see him came back to her. Before he could stop her, she was out of bed, taking the sheet with her, and searching through their clothes until she found the photo in question. She stared at Ellie's picture for a long moment before coming back to bed. Peggy tried to think of what to say, but nothing came to mind. Instead, she simply handed the photo to Steve.

He stared at the girl in the photo for a long moment and she watched as he jumped to conclusions but didn't say any of them out loud. He looked at the girl a little closer before he finally lifted his head and stared right at Peggy.

"Her name is Eleanor Sarah," she told him, shifting closer on the bed so that she could press against his side again. "She's five."

"And her dad?" he asked quietly. Peggy heard him swallow hard, almost like he was afraid of her answer.

"The idiot decided to crash a plane into the ocean instead of giving me his coordinates," she told him, the humorous response somehow easier than a serious one.

"Christmas baby," he muttered to himself, turning his attention back to the photo again. When he offered her nothing more, she began to worry. Coming back from the dead was one thing, but coming back from the dead to discover you had a daughter you'd never met was another. "Howard said you were in Colorado?" he asked, changing the subject while keeping his eyes glued to the picture.

"I had to keep her safe," she told him. At that, he finally turned and looked at her. With a small sigh, she began at the beginning. She told him about finding out she was pregnant, about the panic among the US government and the SSR to recreate the serum and how much she had feared that someone would show up on her door step to snatch either her or Ellie to get access to the serum if they learned she was Captain America's daughter.

The longer Peggy talked, the angrier and more frustrated Steve became with himself. Peggy had given up a career that meant everything to her, had moved away from everyone she knew to protect his daughter because he wasn't even willing to give them a chance to find him. He had abandoned his family and that thought alone made him sick.

"Where is she?" he asked, shifting on the bed so he could grab his shorts from the floor and put them back on.

"Mr. Jarvis and his wife took her to the Central Park Zoo," she replied, accepting the pieces of clothing he was handing her. He hesitated in asking if Ellie knew about him, but she assured him that the girl knew about him. "Not the Captain America part," Peggy clarified as she pulled her stockings back on. "But she knows you were a soldier, a good man and that you died protecting your country." He nodded and the two finished getting dressed. He watched, a contented smile on his face, as she did her best to fix her hair before pulling the tube of red lipstick from her purse. Satisfied they were both ready, Steve took her hand in his and led her towards the nearest subway.

***

"MAMA!" Ellie called out from where she was balancing on the guard fence while staring at the monkeys swinging in their cage. "Mama, monkeys!" she called out again before hoping down from the fence and racing over to her mother. Steve stepped back slightly as the little girl raced over and all but jumped into Peggy arms. She was a slip of a girl, small for her age and wiry, but she had the rosy cheeks and bright eyes he'd been lacking as a child. He wondered if she like to read or sing or draw. He wondered what her friends were like and what kind of games they played together and he wondered what it would sound like if she called him dad, if she'd want to call him dad.

He worried that he'd been gone to long, that Ellie wouldn't want anything to do with him while wondering at the same time if he was cut out to be a father, especially a father to a five year old.

"Steve, this is Ellie," Peggy said, snapping Steve out of his musing and into the present. "Ellie, this is Steve."

"It is a pleasure to meet you, Ellie," Steve said, offering her his hand. She giggled and eagerly shook his hand a few times before settling back into Peggy's arms.

"Do you like monkeys, Steve?" she asked.

"I love monkeys." With that, the little girl was wiggling out of Peggy's arms and the minute her feet hit the ground, she took Steve's hand and dragged him over to the monkey cage. Peggy followed along behind the pair at a more sedate pace, determined to linger in the background while Steve got to know his daughter. They'd tell the girl the truth as soon as they were behind closed doors, but for now, this was enough.

***

A year later, Ellie sat at the kitchen table, swinging her feet back and forth as she waited for her father to finish breakfast.

"I know a secret," she blurted out to him as he slid some eggs onto her plate.

"Oh really?" he asked as he slid a slice of fried bologna onto the plate next. Ellie nodded her head vigorously as he covered her eggs in ketchup. "Well, you're a lucky girl then. Not everyone gets to keep a secret." Ellie stared at her father for another moment before finally picking up her fork and starting to eat.

"Mama's having a lie in," Ellie told him when she saw him glancing towards to bedroom door yet again and Steve couldn't help but smile. He found Ellie's mix of American and British terms to be adorable.

"We'll make her breakfast later then," he said as he poured himself a cup of coffee and her a glass of milk before finally sitting down to his own breakfast.

"Make extra," she said around a mouthful of eggs. "My brother needs to eat too."

 


End file.
